


a hole where something was

by poorbird



Category: Romeo And Juliet - All Media Types, Romeo And Juliet - Shakespeare
Genre: implied b/c Something happens before anything really happens
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-08
Updated: 2015-04-08
Packaged: 2018-03-21 20:52:25
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 876
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3704535
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/poorbird/pseuds/poorbird
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Benvolio comes home to an unexpected guest. It's Mercutio's fault.</p>
            </blockquote>





	a hole where something was

In hindsight, Benvolio thinks he should have seen it coming. Not that Mercutio—that he would—not _that_ , but that Benvolio would be in enough of a rush leaving the apartment that he would leave the window open and come home to that _damn ornery stray cat wandering around in his living room_.

Swearing, he drops his coat and shoes (black and black, grotesquely formal) by the door, preparing to chase the cat back out of his apartment, but then he sees where it decides to curl up and stops dead. It blinks at him from the armchair with the absurd purple hoodie (he’d never own anything that garish, that’s obvious, and it…stings a little to look at) still sprawled over the back, armrests picked threadbare by restless fingers, and that. That makes it absurdly difficult to deal with anything, and so he sinks down onto the couch, closes his eyes, and sighs.

 \\\\-//

Benvolio’s always been good at compartmentalizing, separating what he feels and what he feels he has to do into their own neat boxes. Mercutio, the bastard, flings—flung himself about, invaded Benvolio’s apartment and left himself everywhere.

Mercutio, the _bastard_ , isn’t even here and he’s entertaining the cat as though he was.

He looks at the bits and pieces of paper strewn about, shreds waiting for a purpose, to be part of some bigger scheme than “insignificant feline plaything.” Mercutio had written them impulsively, grabbed spare scraps of paper and started scribbling.

“It’s, like, you have to let them out,” Mercutio had said once. He’d paused for a half-second, scribbled out the last word furiously, resumed writing. “You have to _get_ it out, before it starts to eat you. Y’know?” And he had looked up, a startling and unexpected shift of his single-minded intensity.

And the thing is, Benvolio hadn’t known, still doesn’t. Benvolio doesn’t know giving anger control of his jaw and his knuckles, gagging on the heartbreak sitting on the back of his tongue and peeping down his throat, letting giddiness perch in his ribcage. Not for lack of emotion. (Of course. Or else, why all this?) No, they just functioned differently. (“Sometimes I think I was wired wrong,” mumbled Mercutio some distant, gray 2 AM.) It had always seemed so exhausting, Mercutio pitching himself into fights, into love, into work. Throwing himself to the dogs of his emotions. It was always easier for Benvolio to imagine his own emotions diffusing into his bloodstream, fizzling out until they were less acid-sharp.

So, no. Benvolio hadn’t known. “Yeah,” he had said, “I get it.” It was easier.

 \\\\-//

He thinks the cat must belong to somebody, or at least it did, because it looks at him with too much disdain to not have lived with humans. Also, it’s been an hour and a half and every vertical surface at shin height is scratched to all hell and there’s fur absolutely everywhere.

Before he can stop himself, Benvolio thinks about thanking Mercutio for the pet he never even wanted.

Blinking, he begins to gather up the scraps of paper, giving the cat an almost comically wide berth. It squints at him and moves away cautiously, returning to the armchair, where it continues to gaze at him like he’s a subspecies.

“Whatever, take the damn chair, it’s not like he’s gonna need it,” Benvolio mumbles, scrubbing a hand over his face in an effort to alleviate the sudden intensified prickling behind his eyes. He contemplates burning the scraps and then immediately dispenses with the thought. What good are salt and a wound if he isn’t going to press one to the other?

 \\\\-//

He idles throughout the day—the cat paying him little mind all the while—pacing to the window once, to his counter twice, to the door more times than he cares to think about before he realizes he has nowhere to go. He clicks through channels so quickly he isn’t sure he’s processing one before he’s flipping to the next. He watches the light coming in the window lengthen along the floor, tilts he foot away before it can touch him. He begins wandering his apartment again.

He feels like a ghost and he snorts at the irony.

 \\\\-//

He ends up going to bed much earlier than he usually does, sunlight still spilling crimson along his floor, with the sensation that he’s been tonguing the bleeding gap where a tooth once was. “Doc, there’s a hole where something was,” he begins to hum, but there seems to be something blocking his throat, and so he stops and makes a mental note to delete the song from his iPod, lest shuffle betray him and trigger a massive sobbing episode on his way to work one day. He thinks about how one day it won’t be so raw and tries not to linger on how it doesn’t seem possible from where he’s lying. His best friend is dead and he can’t imagine it ever not hurting.

He thinks, “Don’t bleed on my floor,” one last terrible joke. He thinks about swallowing his panic and reaching for his phone. He thinks about a closed casket.

The cat leaps up onto the bed and curls up in the corner farthest from him. Benvolio does not sleep.

**Author's Note:**

> Title from Fall Out Boy's "Disloyal Order of the Water Buffaloes."
> 
> Apologies for that Something can be demanded at punkmercutio.tumblr.com. Or apologies in general.


End file.
